PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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faatal said:
[snip]

RWG is getting some improvements for A22. Alloc and I have reduced memory use a huge amount. I have also been working on performance with stamping now many times faster. I plan on looking at road generation speed next as is the slowest system now. Better messaging. Some fixes for seeds not being consistent and possibly other bugs like biomes not matching percents.

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Our gfx programmer is adding new hair shaders, contact shadows and ambient occlusion.

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first: HECK YES ambient occlusion, all my homies LOVE ambient occlusion.

Second, a question about roads. Are there any other changes to roads being made beyond tweaking generation speed? I'm someone who almost exclusively uses roads and and trails and doesn't often off-road, especially with the new vehicle damage changes, so I was wondering how difficult it would be to tweak the road generator so that a city or town once in a while has all four cardinal directions see entrances and exits. This is mostly a throwaway question not meant to be taken incredible urgently or seriously, but it's something that's been on my mind since the new RWG dropped.

It's also super good to hear that biome percentages are being tweaked for accuracy! I almost always make my wasteland biome smaller than the others and more often than not it comes out almost the same size or larger than the other two (or so comically small that cities won't spawn inside of it).

 
Laz Man said:
1. Football Stadium refactor.  The original has not been updated for several alphas.  My goal is to redesign it so it works both in Navezgane and RWG worlds.

2. There are several high tier POIs planned for A22, some of which has already been shared on social media

3. Some new POI trigger improvements coming in A22.

4. The new character system hands down.  
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Coughs * Airport POI * Coughs

 
faatal said:
RWG is getting some improvements for A22. Alloc and I have reduced memory use a huge amount. I have also been working on performance with stamping now many times faster. I plan on looking at road generation speed next as is the slowest system now. Better messaging. Some fixes for seeds not being consistent and possibly other bugs like biomes not matching percents.
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I'm really surprised and happy that someone can take on Robert's work!

I was worried there was no documentation of the code and that putting your hands on that could easily create bugs.

It's kind of his best legacy there... and the Dishong Tower of course. Godspeed!  :thumb:

 
faatal said:
Our gfx programmer is adding new hair shaders, contact shadows and ambient occlusion.
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This question comes from someone who doesn't really know the ins and outs of how these various components work but my idiot brain reads those as things that'll make the game look better but run worse.

Or am I wrong and these are actually intended to reduce performance impact while maintaining the current fidelity?

I hope that made some sort of sense

 
FramFramson said:
The biggest obstacle to Airport POIs are that the existing suite of rounded blocks are insufficient to make halfway passable planes. Fuselages, yes, but cockpits & tails & such that don't look look like they're made out of Duplo require new form blocks.
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Dude....been asking for this since A4.....I made 2 airports when the plains biome was still a thing...a rural and an urban......I made planes and helicopters on runways that you could enter. Its possible....but even if they dont want those make them a static item in game....Cmon now..cant even upload pictures anymore...this new forum platform blows !!!

 
Ouch Quit It said:
Dude....been asking for this since A4.....I made 2 airports when the plains biome was still a thing...a rural and an urban......I made planes and helicopters on runways that you could enter. Its possible....but even if they dont want those make them a static item in game....Cmon now..cant even upload pictures anymore...this new forum platform blows !!!
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We have talked about airports many times, so its not a lack of desire.  Just not in the cards for gold release.  Unfortunately, to do a proper airport with our current standards we would need more than just one airplane model.  Maybe for DLC or next game.  

 
Ouch Quit It said:
Dude....been asking for this since A4.....I made 2 airports when the plains biome was still a thing...a rural and an urban......I made planes and helicopters on runways that you could enter. Its possible....but even if they dont want those make them a static item in game....Cmon now..cant even upload pictures anymore...this new forum platform blows !!!
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You always use the Airport mod.  It doesn't get placed with RWG because it's too large but you can place it manually or place it automatically when generating a map with Teragon.  Yes, planes aren't perfect because of the limitation of block shapes, but it's really well done and has a variety of layouts available.

As far as posting images, you can do that.  You can either copy/paste an image, drag the image to your post, or click the Choose Files link below your post to attach images.

 
I think it would be possible to create an Airport POI (rural or modest suburban) within the 100x100 tile limit if it did not include runways, so you'd still be back to placing it manually, or else adding something to the road generation system that applied a runway adjacent to the tile (the latter of which is beyond most modders).

As for planes, maybe just a cockpit "block" for larger planes the way the trailer wheels and similar objects work in-game for the mostly-block items like RV trailers, semi-trucks, etc. You could also have a couple wrecked or burned out cessnas the way we have various wrecked or burned out cars all over. Those would require Unity models custom specced to fit in as an in-world block, but they'd be static items, so it's not an insurmountable problem for a mod.

Those two are really all you need for a decent player-made POI setup without having to use a set map which fully dedicated to an airport. Sure if you want a giant metropolitan airport, then yeah you'll need a huge area that will dominate any map, but I think most people just want some sort of additional large POI to spice up the game. T5 POIs, especially ones which can be placed outside of towns, are something the game absolutely needs more of, considering that raiding T5s is essentially the Endgame currently.

I guess what I'm saying is, we don't need to wait for TFP to implement airports. Fans can do it, with a little work and a bit of outlay/effort for a few needed assets.

 
At least a small country air feild would be cool. Like a place you learn to fly. It is the country side! Kinda like farcry 5

Or even a farm with a small air strip 

Then again there has to be a plane model. He'll he don't even have a chopper model... yet

 
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I don't understand all this expectations from an Airport POI.

The only cool thing would be if the game could be able to spawn hundreds of zombies at once: THEN, and only then, it would be cool to have an airport filled with "ex-people".

Without that it would only be a very desolate place with too much space and too few zombies.

 
Jost Amman said:
I don't understand all this expectations from an Airport POI.

The only cool thing would be if the game could be able to spawn hundreds of zombies at once: THEN, and only then, it would be cool to have an airport filled with "ex-people".

Without that it would only be a very desolate place with too much space and too few zombies.
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Give the airport mod a try.  It is actually really well done and doesn't feel too empty.  It is also very large and has a variety of quest locations within it.  There are a few maps already available with it and Teragon can place it as if it was a single POI if you want to go that route, though you do need enough space for it to fit on your map.

It is also a fun place to drop a base in the middle of.

 
FramFramson said:
I don't know if you can share this or not, but will the new player characters have much in the way of editable features/morphs (facial... or rough body build/proportions morphs, like say we wanna play a tall himbo or the *ahem* rotund comic book guy), or is there simply going to be a library of stock presets of heads (and maybe bodies)?

I'm fully fine either way, considering that aside from changing skin tone and hair colour, right now you can make all of *two* characters; just excited and curious about what sort of options we're going to get.
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They are doing preset parts, so you would pick a head and body and then vary some aspects like hair.

vergilsparda said:
first: HECK YES ambient occlusion, all my homies LOVE ambient occlusion.

Second, a question about roads. Are there any other changes to roads being made beyond tweaking generation speed? I'm someone who almost exclusively uses roads and and trails and doesn't often off-road, especially with the new vehicle damage changes, so I was wondering how difficult it would be to tweak the road generator so that a city or town once in a while has all four cardinal directions see entrances and exits. This is mostly a throwaway question not meant to be taken incredible urgently or seriously, but it's something that's been on my mind since the new RWG dropped.

It's also super good to hear that biome percentages are being tweaked for accuracy! I almost always make my wasteland biome smaller than the others and more often than not it comes out almost the same size or larger than the other two (or so comically small that cities won't spawn inside of it).
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Roads are not planned to be changed unless we stumble on something or need to fix a bug. I did speed up road gen speeds about 3x, so I can now make an 8k world with default settings in <50 seconds. I do have a fast PC.

Doomofman said:
This question comes from someone who doesn't really know the ins and outs of how these various components work but my idiot brain reads those as things that'll make the game look better but run worse.

Or am I wrong and these are actually intended to reduce performance impact while maintaining the current fidelity?

I hope that made some sort of sense
Click to expand...
Looking better, but running worse is often how it goes. In this case it may cost a few FPS, but it is not a final tweaked feature yet. The lower quality shadow settings may have contact shadows disabled.

 
Riamus said:
Give the airport mod a try.  It is actually really well done and doesn't feel too empty.  It is also very large and has a variety of quest locations within it.  There are a few maps already available with it and Teragon can place it as if it was a single POI if you want to go that route, though you do need enough space for it to fit on your map.

It is also a fun place to drop a base in the middle of.
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My point is not about the POI itself, I'm sure the Airport MOD is great if you say so.

My point is that we need support for MORE zombie spawns (maybe after gold?) to really create tense locations like an airport full of zombies.

 
faatal said:
Looking better, but running worse is often how it goes. In this case it may cost a few FPS, but it is not a final tweaked feature yet. The lower quality shadow settings may have contact shadows disabled.
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Here's hoping we get alot of optimization in Alpha 22

Anyways! How is that going 

 
Unfortunately, unless they can optimize the game enough, I doubt we'll see an increase to max spawns in an area because they are limiting things to make it work with console.  As is common for games developed for both console and PC, PC will suffer because console can't do everything that PC can.  There's nothing wrong with dual development like that but I really wish that they'd just offer it as two games that have differences based on capabilities of the systems rather than restricting what's available for PC.  But that would just generate a huge outcry from console gamers and so isn't going to happen.

 
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